Waguih Ghali > Quotes

“It is strange. A man gets to know a woman. For a long time they are one. They have mingled their thoughts, their bodies, their hopes, their odours, their lives. They are one. And then a while later they are strangers. They are not one any more. Just as though it had never happened, as though looking at oneself in the mirror and seeing a stranger instead of one’s reflection.”
― Waguih Ghali

“Artists try to depict people; and people depict the artist's' conception of people.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“A woman will never fall in love with a man who doesn’t dominate her, however slightly.”
― Waguih Ghali

“One only realizes the extent of his love when he thinks he has lost the one he loves; and unhappily, very often only begins to love when he feels his love is not returned.”
― Waguih Ghali

“It is funny how people - millions and millions of people - go about watching the telly and singing and humming in spite of the fact that they lost brother or father or lover in a war; and what is stranger still, they contemplate with equanimity seeing their other brothers or lovers off to yet another war. They don't see the tragedy of it all. Now and then one of the millions reads a book, or starts thinking, or something shakes him, and then he sees tragedy all over the place. Wherever he looks, he finds tragedy. He finds it tragic that other people don't see this tragedy around them and then he becomes like Font or Edna, or joins some party or other, or marches behind banners until his own life, seen detachedly, becomes a little tragic.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“Cairo and Alexandria were cosmopolitan not so much because they contained foreigners, but because the Egyptian born in them is himself a stranger to his land.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“Perhaps our culture is nothing but jokes.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“What do people who don’t drink do on such occasions? Face the facts perhaps. But facing a fact is one thing, and overcoming it is another. Cognac was going to overcome the facts: overcome Edna’s willed hardness and overcome my lack of suitable words and actions.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“Es extraño. Un hombre llega a conocer a una mujer. Durante un tiempo son un solo ser. Han fundido sus pensamientos, sus esperanzas, sus vidas. Son un solo ser. Y luego, pasado un tiempo, son extraños. Ya no son un solo ser. Como si nunca hubiera ocurrido, como mirarse al espejo y ver a un extraño en lugar de a uno mismo.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“I started to pour some of my passion into politics. I later learnt that a man who has passion in his politics is usually attractive to women.”
― Waguih Ghali

“But every Englishman is born with a certain power. When he wants a thing, he never tells himself he wants it. He waits until there comes to his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who possess the thing he wants … and then he grabs it. He is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude to take. When he wants a new market for his adulterated goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary, the Englishman flies to arms in defence of Christianity, fights for it, conquers for it, and takes the market as a reward from heaven.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“I had become a bit 'loud' lately, a sort of cocksureness which I loathed to see in others and yet was aware of in myself. I suppose if a young man feels he is loved by a rich and beautiful woman, it isn't unnatural for him to be a bit arrogant, but my arrogance was not natural. I sincerely believed if I manifested humility and a loving gratitude to Edna, I would not be loved in return. It is all right for people to pretend that love breeds love, but it is not. The seed of love is indifference.”
― Waguih Ghali

“Es estupendo conducir con un poco de whisky en el cuerpo. Cuando llevo sin fumar una hora o así, pero he estado bebiendo y luego fumo, el cigarrillo me deprime de forma repentina. (Me ocurre lo mismo con las resacas. Por más que haya bebido la noche anterior, me levanto con el mejor ánimo, pero en cuanto fumo me deprimo del todo.) Detuve el coche y encendí un cigarrillo.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“Me senté en el sofá a la manera árabe, y luego ella vino a sentarse de la misma manera delante de mí. Le solté el pelo, como había hecho tantas otras veces, y ella me dio un peine y yo empecé a peinarle los cabellos color caoba despacio de la frente a los hombros; luego le hice una trenza y até los extremos con un cordel que me dio, y le desabroché la ropa y le quité la chaqueta, y luego la blusa y todo lo demás, y se sentó ante mí, desnuda y muy hermosa con la cabeza ladeada. Le dije "te amo" muchas veces, y la besé, y le susurré amor y ternura y recuerdos al oído. Al final se volvió y me acercó su boca y fuimos un solo ser. Dos cuerpos y dos cerebros y dos vidas sujetas la una a la otra, y nada más tenía importancia. Ser amadas y poseer a la persona a quien se ama es la razón por la que nacimos.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“We English never break the law, it's so malleable in our capable hands.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“أخبرني بأنه كان رجلًا عصاميًا. بدأ بالفول السوداني وشق طريقه صاعدًا إلى كل هذا. لوَّح بيده عند كل هذا ونظرتُ وفكرتُ في الدايملر الشمبانيا، وتساءلتُ إن ربما... لكنني تذكرتُ بائع فول سوداني أعرفه سيظل بائع فول سوداني طيلة حياته.”
― Waguih Ghali, الورود حقيقية

“Why does the last event condition the quality of the past?”
― Waguih Ghali

“حين أكتب"، قالَ، "أصوغُ عباراتي بعناية شديدة التدقيق. بين فاصلة وفاصلة منقوطة، ثمة بحر من سوء الفهم.”
― Waguih Ghali, الورود حقيقية

“هل كان يدرك أن الشجاعة لم تحصل لي قط على وظيفة، بل فعل المكر، والكذب، والمجاملات المشينة؟”
― Waguih Ghali, الورود حقيقية

“She opened her eyes. We remained close, looking at one another.
No amount of talking or explaining will really bring two lovers or two friends closer than they can be in silence.
'Please, Ram,' she whispered. 'Go away now.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“كانت إدنا هي التي عرَّفتني بالمصريين. من النادر في وسط كالذي ولدت به أن تعرف مصريين. شرحت لي أن نادي الجزيرة الرياضي ولقاءات السباق وأصحاب الفيلات ومرتدي الأزياء الأوروبية وهواة السفر الذين قابلتهم ليسوا مصريين. كانت القاهرة والإسكندرية مدينتين كوزموبوليتانيتين، ليس بسبب وجود الأجانب بهما وحسب، ولكن لأن المصري المولود فيهما كان هو نفسه غريبا على أرضه.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“استمر: "صدقوني"، كان يكلم الجميع الآن: " الديموقراطية الأمريكية هي النموذج. يا سلام، يجب أن تروا هذا البلد". كلهم كانوا يومئون برءوسهم بحكمة ورضا. لكنته الأمريكية، سواء كانت مقصودة أم لا، زادت من تفاهته.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“I would nevertheless believe that if the world had been just, we would have loved and lived normally, you and I.

'Edna,' I went on, 'when you used to leave, I used to be left with a colossal amount of knowledge and awareness of the world which I didn't know what to do with. As long as you were with me, it had, however vaguely, something to do with my love for you. My knowledge made me a little worthy of you.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“I've told you before, Egyptians are not found in Cairo or in Alexandria' she said. 'You've never really known Egyptians. I hate Egyptians of your class as much as I do my parents.'

' What am I, then, if I am not Egyptian?'

'You are what you are; and that is a human being born in Egypt, who went to an English public school, who has read a lot of books, and who has an imagination. But to say that you are this or that or Egyptian, is nonsense.'

'What are you, Edna?'

'I can't be generalized about either, except that I was born Jewish. But the difference between you and me is that I know Egyptians and love them.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“The mental sophistication of Europe has killed something good and natural in us, killed it for good … for ever. To me, now, it is apparent that we have, both Font and myself, lost the best thing we ever had: the gift of our birth, as it were; something indescribable but solid and hidden and, most of all, natural. We have lost it for ever. And those who know what it is, cannot possess it… Gradually, I have lost my natural self. I have become a character in a book or in some other feat of imagination; my own actor in my own theatre; my own spectator in my own improvised play. Both audience and participant in one – a fictitious character.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“I realise you are engaged to someone else, but you must remember I am not a sophisticated European and so cannot hide my emotions.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“أمن أجل عدم السماح لإدنا بالتحكم في حياتي؟ أي حياة، بحق السماء؟ هل تسمي هذه حياة؟ هل تسمي هذا رجلًا؟”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“كل هذا الهراء عن الإلهام والأفكار، كلام فارغ! الفنانون.... ها! إنه فقط عمل شاق، شاق. ساعة بعد ساعة. جملة بعد جملة بعد جملة.”
― Waguih Ghali, الورود حقيقية